


The Violet And The Sea

by Lhumyaki



Series: Mostly homestuck headcanons [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (its not an E fic so no its not this one), (semi. as in I'll totally throw this hc for a story if needed), Angst, Blood, Blood and Injury, Choking, Drowning, Gen, Headcanon, Hurt, I think it qualifies as one?, Panic Attacks, almost drowning to be precise, and no not comfort or with a happy ending, child being hurt, i think i should tag that, i would say so otherwise, its not, people will think hes the one hurting eridan or smthg, seahorse dad appears too but i feel that if i put him in the characters tag, this is basically a story where youll learn how a seadweller can end up able to drown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lhumyaki/pseuds/Lhumyaki
Summary: Your name is Eridan Ampora, and you love the sea.----Something interesting we know about Eridan i that, even if he is a seadweller that claims hating all landwellers, he spends more time on land than in the water. I think a lot of headcanons about why have been made, and here's one of mine.
Series: Mostly homestuck headcanons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898713
Kudos: 13





	The Violet And The Sea

**Author's Note:**

> **Important:**
> 
> While researching a bit for this fic, I found out that the gills are actually inside the fish, which actually makes sense and I was a dumbass, and what we call gills are the slits that allows the water purified of oxygen by the gills to get out of the fish. Which isn't a difference that important except when you write a story where the difference is actually important. Since I couldn't find the name of these slits, I decided to call them "gills openings" here. But if you happen to know these slits' rue appellation, please tell me!
> 
> Thank you for your attention.

Your name is Eridan Ampora, you are a seadweller, three sweeps old, and you love the sea.

You love the feel of the water on your skin, the way the light of the moons shine through, and the bubblebeasts and other fish swimming around you. There's a sort of peace coming from being underwater.

A bubblebeast swims past you, and your eyes shot right to it.  
A smirk draws on your lips, as you let it swim away a bit more. Once you think it received enough of an advantage, you kick the water and start going after it.

You chase after the bubblebeast (a sardine, you recognize) for a while, catching it then releasing it again and again until you lose track of it. You huff, and look for another one.

Your eyes catch the light reflecting on some scales, and you start a new chase. Swimming right to the bubblebeast, you catch it easily and press a certain point that your lusus showed you. Blood escapes the wound you just made. Huh. Green.  
You open your bag, and throw in the bubblebeast, where it joins three others. You give a nod, finally swimming back to your hive. You're hungry.

Your lusus welcome you back with a nudge, and you go right to the kitchen to cook your catch.

Lately, your lusus have been making you hunt and cook. It's apparently pretty common among violetblood to learn these things so they're better prepared once adults and on mission. You also know that learning how to hunt has something to do with the orphaner job, though it won't concern you before your next sweep.  
You cook all four bubblebeasts, eat two, and keep the rest for a midday snack.

After that, you spend some time reading "Alternia history told to wrigglers", one of the few books that are made for your reading level.

Eventually, you grow bored of the book, and decide to go back in the sea. While the night is getting closer to its end, it's hard to tell with the grey clouds now covering the sky, and it's pretty dark when you run past seahorsedad on the beach.

The water envelops you, and soon enough your gills start working on isolating and distributing the oxygen you need.

You are swimming for a bit when you spot the bubblebeast. A ray of light that pierces through the clouds fall on it, and it's almost the only visible thing here. Looking like nothing you've ever seen before, your gaze follows its moves mesmerized.  
The bubblebeast's body itself is white, as one could expect. But its thin, almost nonexistent fins extend into thousand of colors, magically moving along with the bubblebeast.  
You can't describe it other than beautiful.

Your eyes fixated, you barely notice when you start going after it. You reach out with your hand, close it around the body. This time, when the bubblebeast escape, it's not because you let it go.  
Only once close to it you realized how fragile it looked, and too scared to accidentally wound it, you didn't get a firm grasp.  
You keep on chasing after it, your hand always too loose when catching it. Your eyes won't look away, and as you give a kick to get closer to the bubblebeast again, you feel something around your neck choking you back.

Without thinking, your hands shoot to whatever is restraining you, but the more you try to pull, the more you feel the thing closing on your neck. Your fingers are grasping at it, but they get less and less space to move, and you feel a pressure that is restraining you from breathing normally. Something sharp is piercing your skin a bit behind your left gills.  
Your mouth open and close frantically, and _god you can't breathe, you can't breathe youre going to die_ you pull and pull and it closes and closes and _it hurts_ and  
you feel a sharp of pain as finally the thing goes away. You barely see it floating away, as you start to feel relief. Your body shivers when you feel something caress your cheek. Looking for what it was, you only notice violet dissolving in water, and a cold feeling goes through your body. Your eyes try to follow the origin of the violet surrounding you on the left, and slowly, you raise your hand to your neck.

There, right on your gills openings, you feel a liquid that isn't water escape, as well as a long slit that shouldn't be there. When you bring back your hand in front of you, you have the time to see fresh violet blood dissolving. Your blood.

Your chest start to shake, whole body following soon. _You're bleeding._ You're bleeding, and it's a lot, and it's your _gills_. _You're losing blood._  
You don't know what happened to the bubblebeast, and you don't care. Panic taking over, you only think about leaving this place, escaping it as fast as you can. You just swim right to the top, a straight line to freedom, your breathing getting more and more frantic every seconds. Finally you reach it, and take a huge gulp of air, then two or three smaller just to make sure. Your vision is blurry, not like underwater or the usual blurry, here it's the same blurry than when you watched this movie where the lusus died, and its charge was left there under the sun, with his lusus' corpse as only protection, and he died too from both starvation and heat, unable to provide for itself, and it was so _horrible_ , you remember how hard it was to see when it happened, and wow you're _crying_ , and you feel awful, and you're still in the water and still bleeding it's so more obvious now, streaming down your neck and your chest to spread around you and you just want _help_ , _please_ , you need _help_ , someone, anyone, please _please PLEASE_ -

you feel something wrap around you and press you against itself. A wave of relief wash over you, and you bury your head where you can, clinging to seahorsedad's body floating in the air.  
For all the ride back home you cry, and look anywhere but where the water is.  
\----  
You refuse to go back in the water after that.

Of course, as a seadweller, you still need to keep your body a minimum hydrated, so your lusus forces you to at least use a wet washcloth everyday. You still avoid your gills, too scared of what you'll touch.  
You avoid looking at it. If you don't see it, it can't hurt you.

Sometimes your gaze linger on the sea, but soon enough you remember what happened and have to look away, do anything to not think about it.

Then, your lusus indicates you it's healed and that it's time you go back in the sea.  
You stand on the beach. The water stops some centimetres away from your feet, but the thought of going back make you sick. You feel something gently pushing you towards the water, and with a deep breath, you take a step.  
You let the water caress your feet for a bit, before finally taking some more steps.  
Slowly, you keep on going until you have water up to the middle of your chest. There, you take another breath to give you strength, and dive in.

Your first thoughts are a thread of swears you're glad seahorsedad can't hear.  
You're _underwater_ , what are you doing, idiot?  
But then, as nothing happens, as moonlight shines, you start to feel calmer, and looking around you, you remember how much you love the sea. A small smile on your lips, you swim around a bit. You don't try to chase any bubblebeasts, not that you think you'll ever do it again after what happened.  
You go sit on a rock and close your eyes, appreciating the relaxing currents.

But soon your face scrunched up as you feel unease at your left gills. You shot your eyes wide open, and bring your hand to where the wound was. You can feel the scar, and you realize that the unease is now a tugging, as if it wanted to open.  
You start yo panic a bit, and your breathing ask for more oxygen to come. Your wound tug and tug and tug and hurt and _rip_ and suddenly you feel the blood coming out again.  
You don't think, you don't have time, you swim from the bottom of the sea to the surface, leaving behind a stream of violet.

You hit the surface, and _breathe_ , and call for help.  
Seahorsedad is there again, and again you clench to him, and again you cry, but this time you look down at the sea. You hate it. You hate it you hate it _you hate it._

When seahorsedad put you on the beach, you run inside your hive. Like last time, you put bandages in hope to stop the bleeding, before sitting in a corner and sobbing.

Less time is needed to heal back this time. After all, your body did it already once, it doesn't need training.  
Once again, you refused to look at it or touch it with water.

Once your lusus indicates you it's healed, you go to look in a mirror. You remember there was something bothering when you touched the scar underwater the other time.  
You take a breath in front of the mirror, and turn your neck to see.

A long scar runs through your left gills openings, a scar with tiny branches all along. You follow it with your fingers, barely pressing. Your smallest gills openings are totally non-existent now; the biggest ones are mostly closed by the scar's extensions, as if your body misinterpreted the openings as part of the wound. That's most likely what happened, you think.

You feel tears building up in your eyes, and have to stop looking. You don't want to cry, not again.  
Still, despite all your efforts, you feel something wet rolling down your face.  
\----  
It's in two perigees from now that you will become friend with the heiress.  
It's in half a sweep from now that you will become her moirail.  
It's at four sweeps and one perigee that you will find who is your ancestor, and become the official Orphaner.  
It's at six sweeps that you will die.

For all this time, you never told anyone about your wound, about how a failure of a seadweller you are, unable to stay under water for too long without panicking or almost drowning. You never dared.

Your name is Eridan Ampora, you are a seadweller, three sweeps old, and you loved the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it! The next thing you'll see from me will be some headcanons on troll biology, but more importantly, my headcanons on how seadwellers work! I just need to find the courage to do the proper schemes.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
